Monthly Archives: May 2010

Politics

A Year in Legislative Politics Comes to an End

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Beltane                               Waxing Planting Moon

Into the city for the last 2010 session meeting of the Sierra Club’s legislative committee.  The meeting itself, face to face for the first time since January (we met over the phone every week until tonight), produced thoughtful evaluation of both the process and the content of our work.  As Justin said, it was a year that exceeded expectations (low), but could not be counted a good year.  In terms of two major defensive issues:  the nuclear and coal moratoriums, we maintained the status quo, which was a more difficult task by far than it sounds.

After the meeting at the Sierra Club offices, we adjourned to the Blue Nile for an outdoor dinner and conversation that last until 9:45.  We got to do the kind of casual conversation that is so necessary for team building, for trust, for understanding each other.  I hope we will be able to keep the same team together next session.

Politics causes a sneer to come to many lips, but I have always seen it as an honorable and necessary method for mediating differences in a large community.  As the art of the possible, politics always bears the suspicion of values besmirched, ideals sold out, but in fact it is a way, a peaceable way of getting the thing done that can get done.   It involves not the selling out of values or ideals, but the real price both pay for a collision with the reality of the moment.

Dogs, Family, Humanities, Politics

In 80 Degree Weather You’d Do It, Too. If you fit.

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Beltane                              Waxing Planting Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues a puppy habit.vegainwater Even though she’s quite a bit bigger now she can make herself small enough to fit in the rubber water bowl.  This means that when I fill it up, it soon empties.  I have to go buy a smaller bowl, one she can’t use for cooling off.

In other dog related news I bought two sprinkler heads to replace the ones purloined by either Vega or Rigel.  They have a high degree of energy and intelligence.  That makes them inquisitive and with dogs this size that means destructive.

I spent the morning on Ovid, translating verses of the Metamorphoses, 11-15.  This is a slow process for me because I have to look up each word, discern which of the possible words it probably is, determine its possible declension or conjugation, then go back and try to put all this together in an intelligible English line.  Latin poetic conventions make this difficult since words that below together are sometime split apart by as much as a verse.  Also, Ovid, like Shakespeare loved neologisms so sometimes the word he’s used is the only time it was ever used in Latin.

Don’t get the wrong impression though.  When I finished this morning, I whistled and sang, a sure sign I feel good about what I’ve just done.   It’s a fascinating process for me.

Kate has a big month taking shape.  She leaves on Tuesday for San Francisco and two continuing medical education conferences which will take until June 6th.  On June 30th she has hip surgery.  She needs the surgery, her hip is painful for her and painful for me to watch.

The violence in Bangkok continues and some of it happens right outside my brother’s soi, a sort of side street with no exit that is peculiar to Bangkok’s urban design.

Final Sierra Club legislative meeting for the 2010 session tonight.  There will probably be work upcoming related to next year’s session, but for the near term future, that work will come to a close.  No more weekly meetings.  Happy hour after this meeting.

Family, Friends, GeekWorld

Our Servants

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Beltane                                        Waxing Planting Moon

A business meeting took most of the morning.  Our new pull behind wagon for the lawn tractor has come in and I need to go pick it up.  Also, I have to purchase two sprinkler heads, both to replace ones dug up and removed by Rigel.  She does not like the sound of that water in the pipes.  Of course, I also have to solve the problem at its source, the irrigation timing itself.

Yesterday there was no power at all to the wall to which the irrigation clock connects, therefore, no irrigation.  After a number of moves, a tripped GFI switch on the west wall of the garage turned out to be the  culprit.

I often marvel at the number of electro-mechanical servants we have.  The irrigation clock controls twelve different zones allowing us to water different sections of our property at different times and with amounts appropriate to the area.  If we need to go somewhere, we hope in a metal cabin, turn a switch and an internal combustion system comes to life to move us along on our journey.

When we have food that needs long term storage, we put it in a metal box that provides temperature cold enough to keep it frozen.  Food that doesn’t need that level of refrigeration go into either our upstairs or downstairs refrigerator.  Though both cooking devices we have in the kitchen run with gas, if we need an even heat we can use the convection feature in the oven, or we can use the toaster oven.  The microwave cooks foods in a manner inconceivable when I was a boy.  A blender and food-processer save long bouts of stirring with spoons or paddles while an electric mixer will kneed dough and work with flour.  There is, of course, the dishwasher as well.

When we want entertainment, we turn on one of the hd tv’s which receive their programming through a cable attached to our house.  The same cable brings in broad-band internet service which connects our three home computers to the world–quite literally.  These computers allow us to send mail, buy almost any retail product, research all manner of topics, read the news, even watch movies and tv shows if we were so inclined.

That’s not all.  If we want to talk directly to friends or family near or faraway, we can pick up a small phone, independent of any lines at all and call toll free, all amazing from the reference point of my childhood.

In addition of course we have the lights powered by electricity in every room of our home and in outlying sheds as well.

Now, go back over this list and imagine the number of servants it would take to water the property with the kind of precision and control I achieve by pushing a few buttons.  Think of all the work in the kitchen that would require either a cook or a stay at home parent.  The internet and cable tv afford us opportunities that were simply not available in my childhood, global reach and multiple forms of entertainment–at home.

Staying connected with friends and family has become casual, not requiring long trips or extended conversations via letter.

Then there’s the matter of all those candles.  Replaced by light switches.

And, oh yeah, how could I forget in Minnesota:  the furnace and the air conditioner.

This is, truly, an age of miracles.  But, the miracles come at a cost, don’t they?

Commentary on Religion, Woolly Mammoths

The Largest Hindu Temple in the USA

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Beltane                                    Waxing Planting Moon

The largest Hindu temple in America is in Maple Grove.  Who knew?  I dare  you to find it there, though it’s a big place, set on 80 acres and rising high above the plowed fields to its south.  The location makes it intriguing as it sits next to farms and has a large marshland on its property.  This was my fourth visit to the temple, the first since Indian sculptors finished all the smaller temples, 21 in all, and since the carvings have come almost all the way down the temple facade pictured here.  Not a usual sight in Minnesota.

The Woolly’s met there tonight and heard a presentation on Hinduism by Dr. Sane, the founder of the Children’s Hospital and the energy behind the development of the Hindu Mandir of Minnesota.  We then had a fine Indian dinner served by a temple cook.  Great desert, as usual, but the best nan I’ve ever had.  Worth coming back for the food.

After the meal we adjourned to the main room of the temple which has smaller temples built inside housing the living statues of various Hindu deities. (Sri Durga) The main temple deity is Vishnu and he has the largest temple.  He faces the large ceremonial doors which, when opened, shine the light of the rising sun on his body.  Shiva, Lakshmi, Ganesha and Saraswati also have temples.  Each temple has the superstructure of a particular temple located somewhere in India.

All during our presence in the main temple area, Hindu priests with the Brahmanic thread, shirtless and shoeless, chanted prayers, offered pujas and lit incense.  The smells of the incense transported me to Singapore where my sister Mary and I celebrated Diwali by visiting a couple of temples, shopping in Little India and watching the fire walking in the early am hours of a November morning.

This mandir incarnates the global cosmopolitanism that cities across the world have begun to display.  We’re lucky to have it here.

Dogs, Garden

Potatoes in the Ground

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Beltane                               Waxing Planting Moon

Potatoes take some energy to plant.  First you have to dig foot-deep trenches, then you plant the seed potatoes.  After that, you fill the trench back in about 8 inches or so.  Even in my plot’s highly organic soil this involves lifting a lot of mother earth.  Having said that, I love finding potatoes in the soil, like little treasures.  And they taste really good straight out of the ground.  Really good.  (these are not our potatoes.  what a lot of work there.  Whew)

Vega snuck in the garden when my hands were full.  She put the hammer down and raced in a full suspension gallop all around the garden, then came up to me, rolled over and stuck her legs in the air.  Daddy, daddy, I know it was wrong, but I just couldn’t help myself.

Now a nap, then a workout then out to the Temple.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Humanities

Under the Planting Moon

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Beltane                                Waxing Planting Moon

Under the planting moon a large batch of potatoes will hit the soil, companion planted with bush beans.  Nasturtiums go in today, too.  I may have to replant a few things I optimistically sowed a couple of weeks ago.  I knew better.

Finished Wheelock chapter 15.  Gonna let that sink in for today, then I’ll hit the Ovid tomorrow.

Kate and I head out to the new Hindu Mandir in the northwestern burbs tonight for a tour and a meal.  Should be fun.

Goin’ outside.

Humanities

Latin

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Beltane                                  Waxing Planting Moon

An all day Latin day.  I know, a beautiful day and I stayed inside with Wheelock.  Well, I worked outside all day yesterday and will work outside some more further on in the week.  I’ve discovered that, for me, when learning Latin, sticking close to one unit and working with it in a solid block of time allows me learn, integrated and reinforce new ideas.

Today the focus was on cardinal and ordinal numbers, ablative and genitive particulars.  I’m not quite done, but I got far enough along that the new stuff has begun to sink in.  My goal is to finish the chapter, then spend another block of time on Ovid.

If I wait until the weekdays, things begin to interfere and I don’t have the large chunk of time I need when confronted with new material.  I always perceived myself as a poor language student, now I think I never devoted enough time to it.

It feels good, learning new things then putting them to use in translating Ovid.

Bees, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Bee Diary: May 16, 2010

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Planting Moon

The bee project here has two active workers, a woodenware maker and a bee keeper.  Kate has put together 7 honey supers and 70 frames plus four, and counting, hive 05-15-10_bees_woodenware1colony31boxes and 26 frames.  Without her patient and careful craftswomanship, the hives would not exist.  I’m just no good at the fine, repetitive tasks involved in woodworking, but she is.  She brings an artisan’s hand to her work.  As a result we have beautiful hives.

A possible identity for our hives has begun to take shape.  Artemis is one of the many bee goddesses, but she is a familiar name, at least to some, so Artemis Honey is a strong possible name.  A common offering to Artemis was honeycakes, so we might be:  Artemis Honey, The Honeycake Honey.  When we start getting enough honey to exceed our use, including gifts, then we’ll start selling at farmer’s markets.  We’ll need a name, a label, a brand.  We’ll include a  honeycake recipe with every container sold and Kate has agreed to bake up some honeycakes to use as samples at our stands.  Let us know what you think.

Checked the crops today and harvested parsnips.  One resisted leaving its happy home in the raised bed.  It came out well over a foot long.  Smelling the tiny roots off the parsnip just after pulling, amazing.  A sweet, earthy, pure scent.  Wish I could bottle it.

When I left the MIA on Friday, I noticed on my walk back to the car, a migration of caterpillars.  I believe they were swallowtail butterflies in there can’t fly yet stage.  All of them, scores if not hundreds, chose northeast as their route across the warm concrete sidewalks that run between the Children’s Theater and the MCAD campus.  At first I just noticed their numbers, then I saw their common journey.

Where I wondered, did they begin?  So, I followed them back, moving against the small, humping crowd until I found a crabapple tree along an MCAD sidewalk.  Looking up I noticed caterpillars soon to head north by northeast eating their way out to the end of small branches, then, as the branch bent under their weight, falling to the grass.  Why they decided on their direction, I have no idea.

Art and Culture, Poetry

The world still smells of lilacs

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Beltane                             Waxing Planting Moon

from a difficult time in my life:lilacs-10340

The world still smells of lilacs

A star rises from my heart

Into the dark, dark sky.

You and I.

As other celestial objects

Wheel and slowly turn

The star shines.  An urn

Reflects the star light,

It contains the dust

what remains of us.

The star o’er sheep once played

A hope that grew

From a babe into

A savior, a christ,

A man who loved and died.

It watches as we are tried

In the crucible of time

And found wanton.

Left for abandon.

Oh, well.  I loved you once.

The star traverses the sky

Watching, as we die

The death of personal crucifixion

A penalty which seems too harsh.

Yet, a bird sings on the marsh.

The sun rises rosy-fingered,

Eggs are hatching.

Gates are latching.

The world still smells of lilacs